


The Institute of Higher Education

by goodnightfern



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Avocado Toast, Comedy, Other, Philosophy, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29523834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightfern/pseuds/goodnightfern
Summary: Leorio has an interesting run-in with his boyfriend's greatest enemy.
Relationships: Kurapika/Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer/Leorio Paladiknight, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: CLK Week '21





	The Institute of Higher Education

**Author's Note:**

> CHROLEOPIKA WEEK: DAY 3: DARK/LIGHT ACADEMIA

A small movement out of the corner of his eye slipped between the library shelves. Leorio blinked.

"Um… hello?"

No one else should be in the library, not since Corona forced the school into shutdown. Leorio was only here as a well-known student employee, whether rolling breakfast burritos in the cafeteria, tutoring algebra to wailing undergrads, or, more often these days, helping a professor with the intricacies of Zoom. Today both the student librarians were stuck in quarantine and when Kurapika sent him a desperate email… anything for a pretty boy in distress.

"Hello," someone said behind him, and Leorio whipped around to see a kid. Big round eyeglasses and definitely too young to be a student.

"Library's closed," he said warily. "How did you get in here?"

"I don't know. Where's my brother?"

"Who -" and that shape darted by again. "What the -" 

"We need the books," the girl continued. "Have you seen my brother? Did you break in too?"

"I - I'm working, kid! You and your brother need to get outta here!" 

"We need the books."

"Ok, first off, this is a campus library, not a public one, and even then you have to go online -"

"We don’t do online. That's where all the hackers and neolibs live.” Her eyes lit up at something behind Leorio. "Kortopi, I found you!"

The shape froze. Leorio supposed under all that bedraggled hair and filthy clothes was a child. They froze, teetering under a stack of books, and Leorio internally groaned. Two weird kids clearly in need of parental supervision, his ultimate weakness. Gon and Killua dumpster-diving behind the 7-11 he used to graveyard at all over again. "Sorry, but you can't take those books. You guys gotta get out of here. Don’t make me call campus security, all right?" 

“You won’t,” the girl said cheerfully, slipping past Leorio to her brother. “Kortopi, did you find all the books?”

The kid nodded mutely, dropping the stack. No wonder this girl knew the word neoliberal. Chomsky’s Profit Over People, Mikhail Bakunin’s God and the State, a biography of Chairman Mao, Heidegger’s Being and Time, and… oh, shit, not Schopenhauer. 

Look, Leorio only took one class and that was enough to convince him philosophy was nothing but a bunch of pretentious windbags who thought they were so damn smart they wrote entire essays about how smart they were. Schopenhauer needed to get goddamn laid: the thesis of his final essay. Kurapika called him a single-minded pervert for that, and the resulting idiot debacle was enough to turn every single girl in the class into a strident and outspoken feminist. Leorio couldn’t get a date for the next sixth months, but he did find out Kurapika was cute when he was mad, and after seven months they gave up and dated each other.

Maybe he should just let the kids have the books. Two bright-eyed eager minds with a penchant for philosophy and anarchism, fighting back against the cruelties of the cost of higher education? Maybe they’d grow up to be… philosophers. 

Not a chance. 

“Guys, seriously. I will call security if you don’t leave. There’s a public library right across the street, I can show you guys how to get online -”

“What is the meaning of this?!”

Jesus, another? Definitely an adult voice. Leorio turned, inwardly cringing. This freak just popped out of nowhere. 

Freak - yeah, definitely. In a ratty black sherpa jacket and a straight-outta-95 pair of black JNCOs dripping chains, striding forward and demanding Leorio leave his children alone. “You’re not the usual security,” he remarked. “Where’s the brat?”

“You mean…” Kurapika? “Hold on a sec, you are not their -”

But the kids cried out “Daddy!” and ran to his arms, and he squat down and hugged the raggedy one tight before going over their books. “Good job, Kortopi. Excellent work, Shizuku. You got everything. As for you,” he added, squinting over their heads at Leorio, “leave my children alone. The prohibitive cost of higher education is a disgusting relic of late-stage capitalism that tortures the working class. This nation is a death machine and though you sit in your ivory tower -”

“This is a community college! People actually need these books! Go rob Harvard, you freak!”

“Freak?” the man said dangerously. “I am but a single father -”

“These are not your kids!”

Shizuku gasped. Kortopi froze. The so-called father rose to his full height. Couldn’t be over five foot nine, how the hell was he looking down at Leorio? Honestly, he couldn’t be over twenty-five. Unless he was getting busy at twelve.

“Do you succumb to the ideology that the only true family is your biological curse, then?”

What.

“These are mine. I found them myself. Perhaps we don’t have the legal documents, but -”

“Okay! Okay, Christ, I got you the first time. But what - seriously, can’t we just -” and the thing was Leorio kind of did get it, now. He himself was the big idiot who found himself packing Gon’s lunch every day and dropping everything to chase the kid across town when he ditched class because his father was a piece of shit, or dragging Killua to his court-ordered therapy while screeching at his older brother that he needed it, dammit. 

He took in the stranger’s ragged clothes, his big boots cracked and peeling, and sighed. Obviously he was homeless. Maybe an ex-addict of some sort. Found some street kids and took them in. 

Leorio was kind of a street kid once himself. Just him and Pairo and Kurapika, aimless brats throwing rocks in the empty lots around the trailer park.

“- Just let me check them out for you with my student ID,” he found himself saying. “They’re due back in three weeks, okay? Other students need them too, you know.”

The stranger narrowed his eyes and stared at him.

Just stood there. Staring. Big black eyes in his round little face - shit, don’t find the homeless guy cute. Kinda cute? Definitely some recovering addict. Major red flags. Also a fucking freak.

“We accept,” he declared. “If others are struggling to access knowledge, it would be cruel of us to hoard it for ourselves. Kortopi, give Leorio the books.”

Oh. He must’ve just been looking for Leorio’s badge. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly, bending a knee to take them from Kortopi. “I just… I get it, man. It sucks! That’s why, I’m, ah, working here in the library, giving my paycheck straight back to the school. Just don’t make this a habit, okay? Just… yeah, okay. Whatever,” and he was turning into an idiot again as he led them to the checkout desk. 

“I’m Chrollo.”

“Nice to meet you, Chrollo.”

Chrollo stuck his head between Leorio’s face and the scanner. “You’re doing a good deed here.”

“Just… just doing my best, man!”

“No good deed should go unrewarded,” Chrollo stated. “I’m taking you for lunch. You’re very -” and he stuttered, leaned away. “You’re not like that brat I usually run into here.”

“Okay, so if you’ve been making a habit of this…”

“I usually enjoy our battles. But on my last visit Kurapika hurled verbal abuse at my children,” Chrollo declared with venom. 

“That’s just - he gets mad and talks shit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize on his behalf.”

“Dude, I am literally helping you cover up your robbery on your behalf right now. I get to be a neutral party here -”

Wait.

Fuck. 

Was this the guy Kurapika used to rant about? 

Some greasy weirdo always breaking in with some random kids to steal books? They had actual fights in here. Like, hurling books at each other, breaking chairs and shit. Leorio never knew if Kurapika was exaggerating or what.

He should maybe just not say a word. About any of this. To anyone. They exchanged numbers, Chrollo painstakingly tapping the numerical keyboard on his cracked ancient phone, Leorio unlocked the door, and they slipped off as quietly as they stole in.

Exchanging numbers with Chrollo was a terrible idea. Leorio squinted blearily at the actual paragraph on his phone. Six in the morning wasn’t terribly early for him to wake up, but Sunday was his once chance to sleep in. 

_Confucius said that while laws and regulations might be violated, if you govern people purely by power of virtue and adherence to ritual they will develop a sense of shame and follow you of their own accord. How does Bakunin hope to govern his anarchist society without a strong theocratic foundation? The only acceptable law is the law of faith - that which is moral, pure, and just -_

On and on like this. It’s like the guy never heard of separation of church and state. Weren’t communists supposed to be against religion? Leorio shook his head and typed back, **Looks like you’re enjoying the book. Save the essay for class.**

_College is a neoliberal brainwashing institute designed to produce workers as grist for the mill, and higher academia is nothing but useless minds arguing rather than engaging in direct action. The revolution will not be won in the classroom._

Yeah, this guy needed poli-sci and philosophy with a professor to beat the weird ideology out of him. Still, he couldn’t deny it was a little fascinating to listen to. He’d sat in a few of the local DSA clubs meetings, ranting about Medicare for All, but being a health science major didn’t give him much time to read very much about political theory. 

He rolled out of bed and groaned. Happy Sunday. Time to take his laptop down to the cafe and get his damn avocado toast while desperately trying to wrap his head around statistics. Too bad the professor absolutely hated teaching via Zoom, but at least the lectures were recorded so Leorio didn’t have to risk crashing his old Dell just to participate. 

With his headphones on he doesn’t hear Kurapika until the guy is sitting down across from him.

“What the hell? Aren’t you in quarantine?”

“It’s fine.” Kurapika rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. It’s been nine days, I got my mask on. It’s not like I’m gonna swap spit with you. What are you doing out at a cafe anyways?”

“It’s outdoors,” Leorio grumbled, biting in his avocado toast. “So what’s so important you had to come outside, despite every order of the CDC?”

Kurapika gave him an icy glare. “You let Chrollo take the books.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because he’s texting me all these pictures of half the library in his tent city! That fucker acts like I’m the - the gatekeeper to class mobility or something! He and all his little pet rats-”

“Rats?” 

Leorio and Kurapika simultaneously jumped. No one heard him show up but there Chrollo was - standing shocked with two others Leorio recognized. Machi, ten leagues out of his own but in enough shared classes to make him wonder, and Shalnark, local tech whiz on campus. 

“Easy, boss,” Machi said. “Sup, Leorio. Thanks for helping him out.”

“Chrollo can’t really do the online class thing,” Shalnark explained, pulling out a chair and picking up Leorio’s avocado toast. “Whoa. That actually looks good.”

“Leave his toast alone!” Kurapika shouted. “How dare you allow your father to commit robbery against the college? I thought better of you, Shalnark.”

“Dad doesn’t want me to help him.” 

“I don’t approve of his choices,” Chrollo explained. “But I don’t want to hurt your academic career, Shal.” He smiled at Leorio. “Someday Shal is going to become a millionaire app developer and live in a van in San Francisco, and he will devote his riches to bringing about the revolution.”

“It’s good for the little ones,” Machi shrugged. “They have fun with their little commie games.”

“It’s not a game, Machi. Shizuku and Kortopi are brilliant minds hampered by learning disabilities the institutions don’t understand. It's my duty to raise two proper radicals.”

The server came by, surprised at the sudden extension of Leorio’s party. “Guys, I’m sorry, but there’s too many for one table. Do you need two, or…”

“They were just leaving,” Kurapika said, glaring at Chrollo and his friends. 

“I am not leaving. I promised Leorio I’d buy him lunch. Do you want me to buy you lunch as well or not?” 

"I thought you didn't believe in exchanging currency for the requirements of survival," Kurapika sneers, but when the servers bring another table he takes a seat at the far end. 

"Please," Chrollo rolled his eyes. "It's just avocado toast. What am I gonna do, buy a house instead?"


End file.
